If this post was useful for you,
please consider becoming a Patron.
For as little as $1 per blog post you can help!

The spectral multiphonic: those elephantine sweeps from low fundamentals, easy to play once you’ve got the hang of it, easy to write, very idiomatic (especially for the bass clarinet), and one of the great clichés of clarinet writing in the last fifty years or so.

I get asked about these multiphonics more than any other thing when people write in about the blog, so this post is very much overdue. This is the only way to achieve multiphonics in the lowest register of the clarinet (any clarinet), and the effect is wildly different at different dynamic levels and in combination with other effects, so that’s what we’re going to cover today. (Contra multiphonics didn’t fit in the chart below, they’ll be on their way next week!)

If you’re a clarinetist learning how to do these, I’ll try to offer a few tips. Start learning on the biggest clarinet you can get a hold of. They’re much, much easier on bass clarinet than Bb. Start on the low C (or low E if you don’t have a bass clarinet handy), and start practising them at very loud dynamics. From here it’s about finding the right amount of space in the cavity of the mouth and throat. I generally have the feeling that I’m creating more space. You could experiment with lowering the jaw and changing the direction of the flow of air. Once you get some kind of overblown sound it doesn’t take long to learn to control it. Practise sweeps from bottom to top and top to bottom, and isolating different pitches and at different dynamics, and you’re set.

When it comes to notation, there are of course a lot of different ways this can be done. You can notate specific pitches, you can draw lines to indicate pitch ranges, etc.

The multiphonics in the chart were brilliantly illustrated by the amazing Elena Rykova. We did something a bit unusual with the bass clarinet multiphonics, notating the bottom pitch in the bass clef and the top line an octave lower: normally I am very pro treble clef for everything bass clarinet, and pro ledger line, but the sheer number of pitches and ledger lines on each side of the staff made this rather impossible.

Okay let’s get on with different ways you can use the effect. Loads of examples in today’s post as there are loads of things one can combine the effect with. Big table with pitch information at the bottom of the post!

As for the database at the bottom of the post, the accompanying sound files aim to give as realistic an execution of each harmonic as possible. Some clarinettists will be able to go higher, some won’t be able to go as high. What I’ve recorded here is what I’m capable of, on a fairly average day. I wasn’t in perfect shape while recording these (as is often the case when I’m working on blog posts, as I’m then not in the middle of a rehearsal phase) but I wasn’t coming to these cold either.

Because of the width of the bore on a bass clarinet, there are a lot more options for spectral multiphonics. Much more of the first register can be used to produce them with relative ease, and combining effects is less tiring and more effective. So mostly I’ll be demonstrating using the bass, though to some degree, all of this is possible on the clarinet as well. For example, spectral sweeps upwards.

Hope this is useful. Now, finally, examples of some spectral harmonics with pitch material for both Bb and Bass clarinets. I haven’t notated fingerings as these use the core fundamental fingerings for each pitch. Pitches are written (transposed)! The bass clarinet material obviously starts just over an octave below that of the Bb. You can continue to overblow across the range of both instruments with varying results, but what I really wanted to do here was to focus on the range where other types of multiphonics aren’t possible.

Hello! Thanks for this post and generally all the info you are uploading! I find it extremely useful!
However, do you have a suggestion about the fingerings used as well? I would really appreciate it if you could let me know!
Thank you in advance!

Hi Christina,
Sorry if this wasn’t terribly clear, but these multiphonics are all based on normal fundamental fingerings. So the pitch (tranposed) I list as the base note of the multiphonic is the fingering the clarinetist would use — you don’t need to supply it, you can simple write “overblow”!
Does that help?
Heather

1. Why are these multiphonics called “spectral”?
Because they activate the harmonic spectrum!
2. Are there mulitphonics that aren’t spectral on the bass clarinet?
Yep – try looking at other posts on the site.
3. Is the term “spectral multiphonics” the widely agreed upon term for these multiphonics?
Yes!